Gingham Guy Gets a Shirt

Keen observers might note that this is not in fact, me, but rather a man. A rather dashing man at that. This is my boyfriend, Gingham Guy, rocking out in a shirt that I made. A MALE SHIRT WITH A PROPER YOKE AND BUTTONS AND A COLLAR AND STUFF. Can you tell I’m proud?

This shirt started two years ago. Oh that hurt to say. In my defence I didn’t start making this exact shirt, but rather mentioned to Gingham Guy that I wanted to make one, and I purchased the pattern accordingly. The pattern comes from my fanboi fave Colette Patterns and is the Negroni, or as I pronounced it whilst sewing those goddamn flatfell sleeve heads ne-GROAN-i. Because many groans and screams of “DON’T YOU DARE CATCH THE SLEEVE THERE. LIE STRAIGHHHHTTTTT” reduced the joy of this project. Not that it wasn’t a joy, it was, it was just a steep learning curve from the soft lines, darts and French seams (ohhh French seams) of my usual sewing.

I made many alterations for Gingham Guy (sah demanding). He wanted a much shorter shirt than the pattern called for, as well as smaller sleeves. I reduced the size of the front facing as I felt it was unnecessarily wide, but I’ll think I’ll remove more next shirt, and maybe top stitch it to stop any wiff of flapping about (I DO NOT ACCEPT FLAPPING ON MY SHIRTS). I also omitted the pocket, not because I don’t like pockets (um excuse me but is that even a thing?) but because mid sewing Gingham Guy came over, and I had to quickly hide the shirt. In all the flurry it was lost in my pile of doom aka my UFOs. I actually found it today- don’t worry, I wasn’t actually doing anything about the pile of doom, rather re-smooshing it so it looked neater- but I quite like the shirt without it so I don’t think I’ll bother attaching it. Laziness at its finest.

The collar was another story entirely though. After SLAVING over his shirt, Gingham Guy tried it on, SCREWED UP HIS NOSE and asked “Is the collar supposed to be that big?”. And that my friends is why you should be selfish and never sew for others. After refusing to talk to him for a few hours I calmed down and decided to take it as constructive criticism. As the shirt was already constructed, with the yoke firmly sandwiching away all access to the collar I took the hack route. I cut 1cm off of the finished collar and just turned the collar under and topstitched it. Not the best technique but it worked well enough.

I also added many more buttons than the pattern called for. This wasn’t actually a choice per say but rather the result of not measuring correctly when I was sewing the buttonholes. After sewing the second one I realised what I had done and instead of having two weirdly spaced I decided to just go with it. It’s a fash-un feature darling. These tortoiseshell buttons were from the stash. I got a huge bag of them from an op shop for a dollar a year ago. I love op shops.

Since giving this to him, Gingham Guy has worn it nearly everyday, except for ya know, when it gets smelly and stuff. Now if only I can get my making time to below 2 years…